


The Mortifying Ordeal of Being Known

by sapphose



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Ezri Dax is actually a counselor, Found Family, Gen, Therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-15
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-17 15:21:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29473872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphose/pseuds/sapphose
Summary: A weekly counseling appointment with Ezri Dax's most difficult patient, Garak.
Relationships: Ezri Dax & Elim Garak
Comments: 21
Kudos: 47





	The Mortifying Ordeal of Being Known

They met on the holographic cliff ledge, legs dangling over an imaginary sea, facing the broad expanse of the horizon.

Garak had complained that this concession to his claustrophobia was unnecessary (“there’s no need to cause such a fuss on my account, Counselor”) and useless (“I’m well-aware it’s nothing but a figment of light in windowless box”). Ezri countered that it was not for his sake, but for hers; she wanted a chance to get out of the office.

This was one of the strategies she had learned for dealing with Garak. If you wanted to help him with a problem, you had to be ready to pretend that he didn’t have one.

There were other strategies as well, which hadn’t been easy to learn. Ezri Tigan was, whether by nature or by nurture, a non-confrontational people-pleaser. Dax had strength to spare, but Ezri was still learning to navigate the delicate balance of calling on Dax’s force of will without losing her own identity.

But Garak, it seemed, responded best to those who stood their ground. So she learned to face him firmly when he complained and say that he was stuck with her for the next hour whether he liked it or not, so he might as well get used to it.

(In the beginning, she had tried placing the blame elsewhere, saying “if you’ve got a problem, take it up with Captain Sisko.” Unfortunately, Garak had called her bluff, and immediately gone off to do that. Lesson learned- she had to deal with him on her own authority, without calling in someone else’s.)

How to best get Garak to actually take advantage of therapy, she still had not figured out. For now, it was enough that he sat and talked with her.

“I was looking at your records,” she commented, swinging her legs back and forth. He made a face.

“I was under the impression that the Federation had- what was that quaint expression- doctor-patient confidentiality?”

“We do. You authorized release of your prior counselor’s records to me,” Ezri reminded him.

“Oh?” She couldn’t tell if he sincerely didn’t remember, or was pretending not to just to be difficult. She obliged him anyway.

“Yes. You told me that you’d already done counseling, gained any advantage there was to be gained from it, and told me to look at my predecessors’ notes if I didn’t believe you. I took that as consent.” Dealing with Garak sometimes required compromising one’s standards of ethics. Luckily, he tended to be impressed by subterfuge.

“And did it prove my point?” he asked.

“It proved that you’ve been in a room with someone who had therapeutic intent. Honestly, I think you’re probably the reason Deep Space 9 can’t keep a counselor.”

Garak didn’t reply, but smiled widely, which Ezri took to mean that he was proud of the fact.

She had met people who didn’t want counseling before, usually crew members who were resistant to processing whatever traumatic experience had landed them in the counselor’s office. Garak was a unique case. Any attempt to get to know him seemed to be taken as a personal affront or a highly amusing joke, even outside of a medical context.

“I was curious about Dr. Magella’s notes. Where does a Cardassian get a Bajoran earring?”

“The replicator,” Garak answered dismissively. He seemed to consider convincing the visiting Grazarite psychologist that he had converted after receiving a vision from the Prophets to be one of his less impressive ventures.

“Which d’jarra?”

Garak looked at Ezri for a moment in what could have been surprise and what could have been pleasure. He liked when people noticed the little details in his work, whether that work was a garment or a lie.

“I chose one appropriate for the tailoring profession, of course.”

“Of course,” Ezri agreed.

The boldness and intricacy of the lies had struck her as she perused the records. He never told the same one twice, and he never went with anything less than shocking. She wondered if it was a creative outlet for him, like embroidery.

“I quite liked Counselor Telnorri, you know,” Garak remarked casually. Ezri cast about for which set of records that had been.

“Was he the one you told you were actually a Lytasian spy who had been surgically altered to appear Cardassian?” she guessed.

“No, that was that Benzite lieutenant. I told Telnorri that my parents both died when I was a small child and I worked my way up to join the military, eventually having a wife and daughter before I lost it all. It was a true story, you know.”

Ezri raised her eyebrows and tilted her head to the side doubtfully.

“Of course, it happened to Gul Madred,” Garak conceded, “but a true story nonetheless.”

“Do you know what interested me most?”

“Do tell.”

“For all those counselors, you went through at least two or three sessions of lying before you started insulting them and trying to push them away.”

Garak placed a hand over his heart and widened his eyes.

“ _Me_? Insult someone?” he repeated incredulously.

“I don’t know what else you’d call telling Vadosia that their partners would leave them within a month if they didn’t do something about smelling like the corpse of a rotten targ.”

“I would call it friendly advice,” he said primly.

Ezri chuckled in spite of herself. Garak was more likable than he ought to have been.

“Why a targ?” she asked. “Why not an animal from Bolius or Earth?” Not that Garak had any reason to know which two planets Vadosia had been raised on, but not having a reason to know something had never stopped Garak before.

“Because a targ is what exactly what they smelled like,” Garak replied, as if aggrieved she would question his commitment to accuracy.

“I know you’re trying to distract me,” Ezri pointed out. “I didn’t finish what I was saying.”

“By all means, go on.” He gestured broadly.

Ezri took a moment to readjust herself, tucking her legs up so that she was sitting cross-legged. Even though she knew intellectually that the floor was not that far away, she still took care not to move any closer to the holographic cliff’s edge.

“I’m interested, because you didn’t take that approach with me. You jumped right to the pushing away stage.”

“Perhaps I simply liked you less.”

He said it with no malice in his tone, but Ezri knew by now that this remark was designed to cut her down, to bring up her own insecurities. That was what Garak was good at.

 _B_ _reathe in_ , she told herself. _Breathe out. Don’t take it personally._

That was easier said than done, since it was by nature designed to be personal, but she had to keep in mind that Garak lashed out on principle, not because she was inadequate.

“I have two theories,” she said, and didn’t wait for Garak to say he didn’t want to hear them. “The first is that you thought I posed more of a threat, because of Jadzia.”

“I knew from the second I saw you that you are not Jadzia.” It wasn’t acid, not yet, but it was sharp with implications of less-than and second-best.

Ezri soldiered on.

“You knew she was perceptive, and you knew I had her memories, and you worried I would see more of you than a stranger would. More than you wanted to show.” There would have been no fun for him in performing for such an audience, and infinitely more danger.

“And your second theory?” Garak prompted, in a tone that said he was asking only so he could then tear it to shreds.

“Julian.”

It was, perhaps, a low blow. With Garak, those were sometimes necessary.

“What does the good doctor have to do with it?” There was an edge of impatience on his voice, the first tell that Ezri was striking too close for comfort.

It didn’t make her comfortable either, but she was acting on good advice that Garak would only respect her if she surprised him with insight he hadn’t expected, and they weren’t going to get anywhere near trust if they couldn’t establish respect.

“Every other counselor you saw, Julian sent you to. I was the first one to come from Sisko. That’s why you didn’t give me even one visit of lies. You weren’t trying to make Julian happy.” Ezri plunged forward, pushing her luck. “But Julian isn’t the only person on the station who cares about you.”

“The only thing Sisko cared about was whether or not I was in a fit state to decode transmissions,” Garak snapped.

This was probably true, but it also wasn’t Ezri’s point. She persevered.

“Odo cares about you,” she pointed out. Garak scoffed. “And Quark.”

“ _Quark_?”

“Jadzia did, too.”

“And look what happened to her.”

Garak had probably meant for that to make Ezri feel bad, but she found it revealing. Jadzia’s death hadn’t had anything to do with Garak, but he seemed to find a cause and effect in someone caring about him and then losing their life.

“I remember when I first showed you this program,” Ezri recalled, “and you were worried that if you weren’t able to decode again, you were going to be forced to leave the station. But you have friends that care about you, and they wouldn’t let that happen.”

Garak gave a long-suffering sigh.

“I didn’t realize that counseling shared so many similarities with interrogation.”

“I’m not interrogating you,” Ezri argued. “I’m telling you. You’re part of a community.”

Garak rested his hands on his knees and gazed inscrutably out over the artificial ocean.

“I believe your hour is almost up,” he said. Ezri nodded.

“Yes, it is. And then I’ll see you next week. Because I _care_ about you.”

“Whatever you need to tell yourself,” Garak replied, but there was no real bite to it.

Progress, thought Ezri. Definitely progress.

**Author's Note:**

> The fic I really want to read is just the transcriptions and notes of these various counselors who had to deal with Garak, but I didn't feel equipped to write that, so I wrote this instead. If anyone knows (or writes) a fic like that, will you let me know in the comments?


End file.
